Immunisation
The Central and Eastern Sydney PHN Immunisation Program aims to reduce the incidence of vaccine preventable diseases in the community by providing appropriate and timely information to immunisation providers and the community and promote the delivery of the National Immunisation Program (NIP).
The team provides support to general practices, pharmacies and residential aged care homes (RACHs) to:
- Deliver immunisation services in accordance with the National Immunisation Program and the NSW Immunisation Schedule.
- Meet obligation for mandatory reporting of immunisation encounters to the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR).
- Maintain vaccine potency and efficacy by adopting cold chain management (CCM) processes in accordance with the National and NSW requirements.
- Improve immunisation coverage rates across the Central and Eastern Sydney region through the delivery of QI activities.
As of June 2024
93.7
of children were considered fully vaccinated at 1 year - down slightly from 94.2% in June 2023
91
of children were considered fully vaccinated at 2 years - slightly down from 91.6% in June 2023
93
of children were considered fully vaccinated at 5 years - up slightly from 92.5% in June 2023.
Vaccination coverage in children across Australia has continued to decrease since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the need for further targeted strategies to increase vaccine uptake and protect more Australians from vaccine preventable diseases.
17%
decrease in overdue children for practices participating in this project in the region over the last twelve months.
Childhood immunisation project
Central and Eastern Sydney PHN’s childhood immunisation project assists general practices to identify and follow up children overdue for vaccination. 340 practices in the region receive a monthly immunisation overdue report, extracted from AIR by the PHN’s immunisation team. The team then support the practice with a quality improvement activity (QIA) aimed at reducing the number of overdue children at their practice. The launch of the PHN’s Immunisation QIA workbook in February 2024 has been instrumental to the assistance for practices to carry out this activity.
This graph illustrates the decrease in overdue children for practices participating in this project in the region over the last twelve months.
Supporting workforce
Central and Eastern Sydney PHN strives to support the region’s immunisation workforce to increase knowledge of immunisation. This year the PHN has:
- Funded 15 general practice nurses to attend Benchmarque Group’s 2024 Immunisation Professional Development Conference.
- Provided 50 scholarships for general practice nurses to undertake authorised nurse immuniser course.
- Developed a weekly immunisation update, published in the PHN’s newsletter Sydney Health Weekly, ensuring immunisation providers have access to the latest news in the immunisation space.
- Ensured ongoing maintenance and updates to the PHN website to ensure the accuracy and relevance of information.
- Launched a monthly e-newsletter for pharmacist immunisers.
- Facilitated seven immunisation related CPD events, including two face-to-face nurse networking events.
COVID-19 programs
The Immunisation team supported uptake of COVID-19 vaccination boosters to vulnerable groups throughout the region through various programs.
- The Increasing RACH Resident Vaccination Coverage program supports RACHs to improve procedures and service navigation, utilising the local vaccinating workforce to improve vaccination coverage among residents. This project highlights continued strong collaboration between Central Eastern Sydney PHN and the two Local Health Districts in the region.
- The Multilingual COVID-19 Vaccination program aimed to improve COVID-19 vaccination health literacy and understanding among multicultural communities in the Central and Eastern Sydney region with low COVID-19 vaccine booster uptake. It also focused on upskilling bilingual community health workers. The program delivered 53 in-language Winter Wellness education sessions across 11 language groups to target communities, with 675 people attending in total.
- The Keeping the Body in Mind – Vaccines program continues to address the vaccination needs of individuals with severe mental illnesses and substance use disorders in the Central and Eastern Sydney region.
- The Building Community Vaccination Awareness program aimed to increase vaccination uptake in vulnerable multicultural communities. Across three service providers, 2,256 people from diverse backgrounds, primarily non-English speakers (Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic), attended education sessions in the Central and Eastern Sydney region. Post-program surveys showed a significant increase (80-85%) in COVID-19 vaccination awareness and understanding among participants.
CESPHN staff presenting at the PHN-Immunisation Support Program seminar 2024.
CESPHN’s Immunisation Support Team.